Climate Change - What are the causes?

climate scientist wrote:It is clear from reading this paper that IBdaMann and Into the Night have missed the point.

Considering IB and ITN's 'authoritative' sources are websites by:

Cliff Harris: No qualifications in any field of science and no published research. He apparently calls himself "one of the top climatologists in the world" because he has kept scrap-books of temperatures since he was a child. He is a devout Christian who believes only God can change the climate and that he can predict the climate using the Bible.

Robert Felix: An architect with no qualifications in any relevant field of science and no published research. He believes there is an Ice Age Coming..... any day now. He wrote a self-published book about his beliefs and you can buy it from his website

I think they miss the whole point of pretty much everything.

Is this an example of the 'body of science' that IB keeps ranting about? It's not even the dead corpses of science. It's pure crank magnet nuttery. No wonder they love it.

climate scientist wrote:Any such paper would not stand up to the peer-review process,

Sure it would. What do you think the "review process" is? It's not the scientific method, which requires a falsifiable model, which is required for anything to be considered science. "Peer review" is nothing more than getting someone else's subjective opinion on a topic, which could be an unfalsifiable dogma. Will you go on record as referring to this as science?

Global Warming: The preferred religion of the scientifically illiterate.

Ceist - I couldn't agree with you more. But when money and religion are involved, and there are people who value them above all else, then the lies begin.- trafn

You are completely misunderstanding their use of the word "accumulation"!- Climate Scientist.

The Stefan-Boltzman equation doesn't come up with the correct temperature if greenhouse gases are not considered - Hank

:*sigh* Not the "raw data" crap. - Leafsdude

IB STILL hasn't explained what Planck's Law means. Just more hand waving that it applies to everything and more asserting that the greenhouse effect 'violates' it.- Ceist

I have. I have seen scientists ejected from their institutions of study because of what they wrote. I have seen it over and over again. I have seen grant money get cut off because of what they write.

I have seen the 'peer' review process in action. Even the 'international' ones. I've seen what a sham they really are.

I have seen censorship applied by scientific journals and other media, science organizations (especially government controlled ones), and the awful price paid by a scientist that questions the global warming agenda.

I have seen this affect nation after nation. It spreads from a common source: the IPCC.

Do you have any evidence to back these statements up? Or have you just made this all up? There is no such thing as an international and non-international peer review. Reviewers are from the global scientific community. Almost every peer review of a paper is international, and if it is not, then it happens by chance (i.e. it just so happens that reviewers were all selected from the same country, which happens to be the same country that all of the authors of the paper are from). To be honest, a lot of papers are international themselves, since normally they have authors from multiple countries.

Funny, I thought the conclusion of the paper IS the point.

"... accumulation in the interior of the Green-land ice sheet has increased slightly in the currentlywarming climate."

Gain is gain.

As I said, you clearly are missing the point. "accumulation in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet has increased slightly in the currently warming climate". Accumulation rates and mass change are not the same thing!

If Greenland ice is represented by a bathtub of water, all these authors are saying is that the rate of water entering from the tap has increased slightly. They make no mention of how much water is going down the plug hole (i.e. representing the mass loss from ice sheet melt). If the water out is more than the water in, the water level will go down. In this analogy, accumulation is the rate of water in only, not the total water level in the bath.

What do you think the "review process" is? It's not the scientific method, which requires a falsifiable model, which is required for anything to be considered science. "Peer review" is nothing more than getting someone else's subjective opinion on a topic, which could be an unfalsifiable dogma. Will you go on record as referring to this as science?

I know what the peer review process is, because I have participated in the peer review process myself! Peer review is undertaken by multiple scientists, not just one. The review process is detailed - reviewers write a comprehensive review, which examines each part of the paper. Reviews are freely available for anyone to read for open access journals. In fact open access journals allow anyone to comment on a paper during the reviewing stage, not just the reviewers.

I can't comment on the link, because it doesn't seem to work.

I'm not sure why you think various aspects of climate science are not falsifiable. Falsifiability doesn't mean that something has to be proven to be false, just that in theory, it could be proven false. For example, warming of the stratosphere would falsify the theory that GHGs are warming the troposphere, and cooling the stratosphere. This doesn't mean that we need to see the stratosphere warm in order to say that GHG warming exists, only that we need to be able to measure stratospheric temperatures, which we have been doing for decades. Sea level rise is also falsifiable, because a drop in sea level can be measured.

Besides, falsifiability is not everything. The Big Bang theory is not really falsifiable at the moment. And yet it is thought of as science.

@IBdaMann - I have asked branner by PM to consider your repetative content which attempts to insult and humiliate me by adding my quote in your signature, in a way that manipulates my quote to say the exact opposite of what I intended, as a form of spam.

If he agrees, I've asked him to require you to remove this from your signature and to delete my responses to your troll-like, asshole behavior.

If he disagrees, every time you twist my words in your signature, I will continue to respond by identifying you as the troll and asshole that you are.

As I said, you clearly are missing the point. "accumulation in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet has increased slightly in the currently warming climate". Accumulation rates and mass change are not the same thing!

If Greenland ice is represented by a bathtub of water, all these authors are saying is that the rate of water entering from the tap has increased slightly. They make no mention of how much water is going down the plug hole (i.e. representing the mass loss from ice sheet melt). If the water out is more than the water in, the water level will go down. In this analogy, accumulation is the rate of water in only, not the total water level in the bath.

Thanks for the clarification CS! Do you know any paper that shows accumulation rate vs mass loss? It would be interesting to read.

It really looks like the authors were prohibited from expressly stating that total ice mass is increasing because they keep talking around it, hinting at it, but never committing to expressing the bottom line. It also appears that the authors were required to blame "the warming climate" for the increase in rate of ice accumulation.

Because it was such a hit with trafn and others, I'm going to repost the link to the Cliff Harris article. They apparently can only mock Cliff Harris but they can't refute his message.

IBdaMann, I disagree with your statement about the authors being prohibited from mentioning total ice mass. Their data is on snow accumulation, not ice mass, and hence their paper is on snow accumulation, not ice mass balance. There is no reason why they should try to quantify the Greenland ice mass balance, because this is not what their study is about. I'm not sure why you think the authors were made to 'blame' the warming climate either. They cited several other papers that indicate that snow accumulation will increase in a warming climate. But if they did not think that a warming climate was the most likely cause, then they would have written the paper differently. The Journal of Glaciology does not require them to state a particular viewpoint on climate change.

The Chris Harris web page that you have linked to is laughable. All he is really saying is that it snows in Greenland. We know this! He only refers to the snow accumulation, and somehow decides that therefore Greenland is gaining ice mass, even though he doesn't consider ice sheet melting at all. Therefore he is only looking at the inputs to the Greenland ice sheet, and not the outputs. Like I said before, the Greenland ice sheet is like the water level in a bath, that has the tap turned on, and no plug (i.e. there is water input and water output). The water level in the bath will only rise if the inputs exceed the outputs. Since Chris Harris makes no mention of the outputs, he is not able to say anything meaningful about changes in the total Greenland ice mass.

Ceist wrote:Is this an example of the 'body of science' that IB keeps ranting about?

You should probably ask me.

By the way, I appreciate your inclusion of my statement in your signature, but my position is "Supporting evidence has no role in science." Evidence is wonderful for falsifying falsifiable models and is meat and potatoes of the scientific method.

Global Warming: The preferred religion of the scientifically illiterate.

Ceist - I couldn't agree with you more. But when money and religion are involved, and there are people who value them above all else, then the lies begin.- trafn

You are completely misunderstanding their use of the word "accumulation"!- Climate Scientist.

The Stefan-Boltzman equation doesn't come up with the correct temperature if greenhouse gases are not considered - Hank

:*sigh* Not the "raw data" crap. - Leafsdude

IB STILL hasn't explained what Planck's Law means. Just more hand waving that it applies to everything and more asserting that the greenhouse effect 'violates' it.- Ceist

By the way, I appreciate your inclusion of my statement in your signature, but my position is "Supporting evidence has no role in science." Evidence is wonderful for falsifying falsifiable models and is meat and potatoes of the scientific method.

I'm not sure why you think that falsifiable models need to be falsified with evidence. They can also be proven true with evidence. For example, the theory that the moon exists is falsifiable, because we can test whether the moon exists or not. We have in fact proven that the moon does exist, by going there. Therefore, the theory that the exists moon is falsifiable, and it has been proven to be true, not false, using evidence.

climate scientist wrote: IBdaMann, I disagree with your statement about the authors being prohibited from mentioning total ice mass.

My statement was about how it looks like they were so prohibited. I made no claim as to whether they actually were because I don't know. Did you read the article? There's plenty of "talking around it, hinting at it, but never committing to expressing the bottom line" as I specified.

climate scientist wrote: Their data is on snow accumulation, not ice mass, and hence their paper is on snow accumulation, not ice mass balance.

Incorrect. Go back and reread. The authors specify (bold emphasis is mine indicating an unnecessary, and false, assumption on their part, about which you will inquire below).

The growth and decay of ice sheets is driven by a balancebetween accumulation of snow on the surface, primarily inthe high-elevation interiors, and the melting, runoff, evaporation,sublimation and iceberg calving that takes placeprimarily along the lower-elevation margins. The massbalance of the Greenland ice sheet, in particular, is ofincreasing importance to scientists and policymakers, asrising air and ocean temperatures have increased the rate ofmelting and the velocity of calving outlet glaciers, contributingto a rising sea level (Lemke and others, 2007). Thenet mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet has been thesubject of much recent work (e.g. Alley and others, 2007;Rignot and others, 2008; Wouters and others, 2008; Zwallyand others, 2011). Additionally, investigators have studiedthe surface mass balance, primarily accumulation, usingpoint measurements...

climate scientist wrote: I'm not sure why you think the authors were made to 'blame' the warming climate either.

Nothing about this paper is about Global Warming; it is just about what is going on with the accumulation of the ice. Yet they nonetheless felt the need to stick in Global Warming "conclusions" that weren't supported by anything in the report (emphasis mine):

Thus, due to a warmer atmosphere driving an increased capacity for moisture, and in common with the findings of Davis and others (2005) in East Antarctica, accumulation in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet has increased slightly in the currently warming climate.

Ergo, ice mass is accumulating because of Global Warming.

I can read English. I presume you can as well.

climate scientist wrote: The Chris Harris web page that you have linked to is laughable. All he is really saying is that it snows in Greenland. We know this! He only refers to the snow accumulation, and somehow decides that therefore Greenland is gaining ice mass, even though he doesn't consider ice sheet melting at all.

Go back and reread. In both Greenland and Antarctica, ice piles up and buries objects that are left there to be buried by accumulating ice. If you land an airplane on some ice, leave it there, and then a few decades later it is buried under many feet of ice, you can effectively gauge the net amount of ice that has accumulated since landing the airplane, regardless of knowing anything about the rate of input and the rate of output.

Global Warming: The preferred religion of the scientifically illiterate.

Ceist - I couldn't agree with you more. But when money and religion are involved, and there are people who value them above all else, then the lies begin.- trafn

You are completely misunderstanding their use of the word "accumulation"!- Climate Scientist.

The Stefan-Boltzman equation doesn't come up with the correct temperature if greenhouse gases are not considered - Hank

:*sigh* Not the "raw data" crap. - Leafsdude

IB STILL hasn't explained what Planck's Law means. Just more hand waving that it applies to everything and more asserting that the greenhouse effect 'violates' it.- Ceist

Incorrect. Go back and reread. The authors specify (bold emphasis is mine indicating an unnecessary, and false, assumption on their part, about which you will inquire below).

The text that you quoted is from the paper introduction. The authors are simply providing context to their study, and stating how it might be relevant to other studies. The sentence in bold is a summary from the findings of another study, which is cited. The authors are not claiming anything themselves about ice mass balance. Their results are about snow accumulation, not about ice mass balance, but the results are relevant to scientists who study ice mass balance.

Yet they nonetheless felt the need to stick in Global Warming "conclusions" that weren't supported by anything in the report (emphasis mine):

Thus, due to a warmer atmosphere driving an increased capacity for moisture, and in common with the findings of Davis and others (2005) in East Antarctica, accumulation in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet has increased slightly in the currently warming climate

Ergo, ice mass is accumulating because of Global Warming.

I can read English. I presume you can as well.

Um, no you can't! You are completely misunderstanding their use of the word accumulation! They are talking about snow accumulation in Greenland's interior. They don't quantify ice sheet melting anywhere, or quantifying the mass balance of Greenland, which would require determining whether snow accumulation exceeds ice sheet melting.

Go back and reread. In both Greenland and Antarctica, ice piles up and buries objects that are left there to be buried by accumulating ice. If you land an airplane on some ice, leave it there, and then a few decades later it is buried under many feet of ice, you can effectively gauge the net amount of ice that has accumulated since landing the airplane, regardless of knowing anything about the rate of input and the rate of output.

Like I said, it snows in Greenland and Antarctica. This snow freezes and turns to ice. This only tells you about snow and ice accumulation in the interior of Greenland/Antarctica. It tells you nothing about the total ice mass balance, and whether Greenland or Antarctica are losing or gaining mass. This is because you are only considering the inputs (i.e. the accumulation of snow), not the outputs (i.e. the melting of ice). Objects appear to 'disappear' into the snow over time because the ice underneath is melting, while new snow and ice form on top. The accumulation rate of snow tells you nothing about the total mass balance of Greenland or Antarctica.

Incorrect. Go back and reread. The authors specify (bold emphasis is mine indicating an unnecessary, and false, assumption on their part, about which you will inquire below).

The text that you quoted is from the paper introduction. The authors are simply providing context to their study, and stating how it might be relevant to other studies. The sentence in bold is a summary from the findings of another study, which is cited. The authors are not claiming anything themselves about ice mass balance. Their results are about snow accumulation, not about ice mass balance, but the results are relevant to scientists who study ice mass balance.

Yet they nonetheless felt the need to stick in Global Warming "conclusions" that weren't supported by anything in the report (emphasis mine):

Thus, due to a warmer atmosphere driving an increased capacity for moisture, and in common with the findings of Davis and others (2005) in East Antarctica, accumulation in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet has increased slightly in the currently warming climate

Ergo, ice mass is accumulating because of Global Warming.

I can read English. I presume you can as well.

Um, no you can't! You are completely misunderstanding their use of the word accumulation! They are talking about snow accumulation in Greenland's interior. They don't quantify ice sheet melting anywhere, or quantifying the mass balance of Greenland, which would require determining whether snow accumulation exceeds ice sheet melting.

Go back and reread. In both Greenland and Antarctica, ice piles up and buries objects that are left there to be buried by accumulating ice. If you land an airplane on some ice, leave it there, and then a few decades later it is buried under many feet of ice, you can effectively gauge the net amount of ice that has accumulated since landing the airplane, regardless of knowing anything about the rate of input and the rate of output.

Like I said, it snows in Greenland and Antarctica. This snow freezes and turns to ice. This only tells you about snow and ice accumulation in the interior of Greenland/Antarctica. It tells you nothing about the total ice mass balance, and whether Greenland or Antarctica are losing or gaining mass. This is because you are only considering the inputs (i.e. the accumulation of snow), not the outputs (i.e. the melting of ice). Objects appear to 'disappear' into the snow over time because the ice underneath is melting, while new snow and ice form on top. The accumulation rate of snow tells you nothing about the total mass balance of Greenland or Antarctica.

If one house burns, then the whole neighborhood must be on fire. Or is it the whole city? Maybe just the whole block? This whole thing is sounding like answering how long the English coastline is.